Shortia : a newsletter of the Western Carolina Botanical Club.

MARCH 1931

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WESTERN CAROLINA BOTANICAL CLU 3

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

THE HISTORY OF SHORTIA REVIEWED
IDENTIFICATION OF LEAVES
OFFICERS FOR 1981
EXCERPTS FROM HISTORIAN'S REPORT

PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

FOR THE. CLUB

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THE HISTORY OF SHORTIA REVIEWED

Several years ago typed copies of the history of the discoveries of Shortia in
Western North Carolina were distributed to our members. Verna and I copied
this interesting history from Chapter A in a book edited by Roderick Peattie
titled "The Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge. " In this chapter, written by
Peattie' s younger brother Donald, is a section "The History of Shortia, the
Lost Flower. "

For the benefit of new memters I should like to repeat a condensation of this
informative article; and for a disclosure to us all, I want to include the
previously unpublished account of Shortia found growing near Marion by Asa Gray.

In his account of Shortia' s history, Donald Peattie tells of the confirmed
reports of Andre Michaux's finding the unknown plant, its rediscovery ninety-
eight years later by Sargent in the same locality, and then telling of his own
similar experience at a later date.

Reading Peattie' s article, one learns that Andre Michaux came to Charleston,

South Carolina in 1781 when he was 40 years old. In June of that year he ex-
plored some of the up-country of North Carolina. But it was on his second trip
to America in December of 1788 that he collected a small branch and fruit pod
of an unknown plant in the North Carolina mountains. This specimen was
deposited in the herbarium in Paris together with a single note that it came
from the "high mountains of Carolina. " It gathered dust there for half a
century until young Asa Gray and John Torrey went to Paris to see all America-
type specimens in Europe.

"1 have discovered a new genus," Gray records on April 3, 1829* “in Michaux's
herbarium — at the end, among the plantae ignotae. It is from that great unknown
region, the high mountains of North Carolina. I claim the right of a discoverer
to affix the name. So I say, as this is a good North American genus and comes
from near Kentucky, it shall be christened Shortia." Dr. Charles Wilkins Short
was a fine pioneer botanist of the Bluegrass State.

So Shortia was described in botanical manuals of the time — always with the
baffling statement; "flowers unknown."

In the meantime Dr. Gray had set out at the first possible moment after his
return to America in the summer of 1840 to search for it. He made his head-
quarters at Jefferson in Ashe County, North Carolina, and searched far and wide — »
all in vain. He could have no idea that he was more than one hundred miles
from Michaux's original station or type locality, nor that he was hunting for
it in the wrong season and at the wrong altitude.

In the meantime Ear. Gray had discovered in an old Japanese herbal the picture
of a plant that unmistakably was a shortia, and so there at last he beheld a
picture, at least, of the flowers. So Dr. Gray's prediction which he had made
for the form of the flower based on the structure of the seed pod, was borne
out. Shortia, it was evident, must be a member of the same family as galax.

The search caught the fancy of young Charles Sprague Sargent of Brookline,
Massachusetts, the future director of the Arnold Arboretum and America's
greatest authority on trees. He turned back to Michaux's original diary which
reads in part;

Shortia, pg. 2

"Dec. 11,1788... I came back to camp with my guide at the head of the
Keowee and gathered a large quantity of the low woody plants with the
saw-toothed leaves that I found the day I arrived. I did not see it
on any other mountain. The Indians of the place told me that the
- leaves had a good taste when chewed and the odor was agreeable when
they were crushed, which I found to be the case.

"Directions for finding this plant: The head of the Keowee is the
junction of two considerable torrents which flow from cascades from
the high mountains. This junction is made in a little plain which
was formerly a city or village of the Cherokees. In descending to
the junction of the two torrents, having the river at the left and
the high mountains which look to the north on the right, one finds
at- about thirty to fifty paces from the confluence a little path
formed by the Indian hunters. Continuing in this direction one
arrives at last at the mountains where one finds this little shrub
which covers the soil along with Soigaea repens." (Trailing arbutus)

Then in the autumn of 1886, just ninety-eight years after Michaux had written
the passage above, Sargent found himself in the Toxaway country with its steep-
gabled high ridges drenched much of the time in rains, and its plunging stream
valleys perpetually shaded by dense rhododendron thickets. "Would I were with
you," wrote the aged Dr. Gray. "I can only say, "Crown yourself with glory by
discovering the original habitat of Shortia." Gray's letter arrived in the
evening mail, just as the botanists were emptying out their vascula after the
day's collecting. Dr. Sargent produced a strange leaf and passed it over to
one of his companions with a query. "Why, that's Shortia, of course," was the
joking answer — which proved no joke at all.

Now the author Donald Peattie relates his own discovery experience several
years later:

"Perhaps the author can best describe where Shortia was found
again by a reference to hi a own notes, for the day that I
discovered Shortia was like that when Sargent came upon it,
torrential ly rainy. I had walked all the way from Tryon to
Toxaway in fine weather. Now I was soaked to the skin by a
downpour and driven to take shelter in a mountain farmhouse.

"I had no reason to think that my host knew the Latin names
of plants when I asked him: "I don't suppose you know of a
flower around here called Shortia?" Even the smallest of his
children from the other side of the stove chorused a scornful,

'Of course we know ShortiaJ 1 ’

'Why, boasted my host, he guessed he had more Shortia on his
land than anybody else in the country, and there didn't many
people got any, because it was the durndest rare flower God
ever made. 1

"My host invited me freely to take all of his Shortia I
wanted — which was very little — and gave me minute directions
for finding the trail (perhaps the same that Michaux
followed, almost certainly so, indeed). The rain having
momentarily abated, I set out according to directions expec-
ting to have a steep ascent, and found myself going down,
and down, and down....

Short i a, pg. 2

"According to my map I must now be down to about fifteen hundred
feet, and well inside South Carolina. I realized at last how
Gray and others were misled by Michaux's note 'high mountains of
Carolina. ’ He didn't say on the high mountains. He meant to say
among the high mountains. The heavy forest was utterly 3ilent
and lonely, and I could hear another downpour coming through the
woods, with a sizzling sound, and see the veil of rain water
trailing swiftly toward me.

"And then, suddenly, right under my feet, spreading far as I ,
could see under the rhododendron, growing on the steep bank with
leaves of galax and partridgeberry, I beheld the long- sought- for
little flower, its round leaves beginning to curtsy, and its
frail sweet bells to swing under the first pelting of the rain.

I set a trowel under a plant of it and just as the rain smote my 1"-

face, I lifted from the sour soil a living Shortia galacifoliai "

So far it has not been revealed that Asa Gray ever saw Shortia growing in a
natural habitat. But recently several sources have revealed that Gray did see
Shortia growing in North Carolina, although miles from the location of Michaux's
discovery.

Professor Earl L. Core* of West Virginia University, discloses that Shortia was
found growing on the banks of the Catawba River near Marion by a young native named
George Hyams. Hyams sent a specimen to Dr. Gray who said: "Now let me sing my
nunc dimittis." Nothing would do now but a pilgrimage to Shortia in 1870. The
aging Gray and his party arrived too late to see the rare flower but they .saw the
plant in its natural habitat and had another gay and strenuous season of tramping
through the mountains of North Carolina. Gray made one final short journey in
1884 to North Carolina and his beloved Roan Mountain. He died June 3o, 1888.

Bringing this part of the Shortia story up to date is our friend Carter Hudgins

of Marion who confirms that the Shortia Gray saw is still vigorously thriving.

* Additionally reported in Asa Gray by A. Hunter Dupree; Harvard Press 1959

Addendum

A letter dated March 5, 1981 from Jimmy Massey, Curator of the herbarium at
Chapel Hill, confirms that they have specimens of Shortia from McDowell County
(Marion area) showing flowering dates of March 2^ and April 1. So our
scheduled trip on March 27 this year should be about on target.

_

Pg. 4

IDENTIFICATION OF LEAVES —

Page 5 of December Issue

From left to right

-Top Row-

-Second Row-

White Oak

Silver Bell

Red Maple

Tulip Tree

Locust

Sourwood

Sweet Gum

Hickory

-Third Row-

-Fourth Row-

Ash

Cherry

Red Oak

Dogwood

Sassafras

Sugar Maple

Linden

Buckeye

ELECTED OFFICERS

At the Annual Meeting held Friday, January 30, the following officers of
your club were duly nominated and unamimously elected to serve during 1981:

President
Vice President
Secretary
Treasurer

August Kehr
Sam Childs
Margaret Canfield
Margaret Kuhn

EXCERPTS FROM THE HISTORIAN'S REPORT

(John Kuhn)

We had 37 flower trips, two of them included extra activities. One was the
pot luck 3upper at Camenzinds interesting estate, (with its gracious hosts)
attended by 48 hungry people. It is always a pleasure to attend a gathering
there and we all wish to express our appreciation to Peggy and Enno .

The other pot luck, or covered dish, was at Holmes State Park where ^1 were
present. Those numbers tell a story the scheduling committee should take
note of. This Club likes to eat.

We had one trip to the Asheville Botanical Gardens to eradicate some
pesky weeds.

On September 15 there was a hike at Holmes State Forest. Miles Peelle gave
a talk on Survivors, Hangers-on, and Odd Balls of the Botanical World.

Our longest trip, an overnight, was to Bluff Mountain. The round trip was
325 miles. Thirty-two people attended. We saw about 30 flowers in bloom,
and 2 interesting old churches at West Jefferson.

A stop was made at Moses Cone Estate off the Parkway, and another stop for
a picnic lunch, with other stops at scenic spots on the Parkway on our return.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
IMLS LG-70-15-0138-15

https://archive.org/details/shortianewslette3119west

Pg. 5.

Per mile of travel equaled .092 flowers per mile.

The next longest trip was to Roan Mountain — 17 6 miles. Twenty-four people
saw 15 flowers in bloom, which equals .075 flowers per mile.

The best flower average was the Van Wingerden Greenhouses trip.

The attendance at the indoor meetings was 222 people, an average of 52
people. There were 7 meetings. Almost 1200 people turned out for our trips
and hikes.

The most flowers seen on the trips or hikes was at Buck Springs Gap, led by
Miles Peelle, the number being 45. The same number were seen at Bear Wallow
Mountain which was led by Lew Mains.

*** * one

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